Philippine Telegraph and Telephone Corp (PT&T), which has set out its stall to become the country’s third major telco, received a blow this week when the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) declined its application to resume trading its shares on the local bourse. In a statement yesterday (4 September), the PSE said that PT&T has still failed to comply with disclosure rules and has not submitted ‘compliant structured reports, such as quarterly and audited annual reports, since 2004’. As such, the operator will ‘remain under involuntary trading suspension until it completes its submissions,’ said PSE president and CEO Ramon Monzon.
As previously reported by CommsUpdate, last month PT&T said it was confident it would be in a position to resume trading on the PSE before the end of the year, as it looks to improve its bid to become the country’s new third telco. In a company filing dated 30 August, the company claimed to have ‘completed all the requirements set by the PSE on lifting the voluntary trading suspension covering 800 million common shares’. Chief operating officer Miguel Bitanga said at the time that having met the brief, it should now be allowed ‘to resume trading and enact future plans of the new shareholders and management team’.